Recount overturns Allende granddaughter's mayoral win

Maya Fernandez, a granddaughter of slain Chilean President Salvador Allende, saw her hopes of becoming mayor of the capital district of Ñuñoa dashed on Tuesday when a recount showed that she lost the Oct. 28 election by a mere 30 votes.

The initial results gave the victory to the 41-year-old Socialist candidate and Sabat was quick to congratulate Fernandez and extend an offer of help.

Sabat's rightist RN party, however, formally challenged the tally and demanded a recount.

The apparent win by Fernandez, a biologist and veterinarian, was one of the big surprises of Chile's Oct. 28 municipal elections, in which President Sebastian Piñera's conservative coalition lost 19 mayoralties.

Maya Fernandez is the offspring of the late president's daughter Beatriz Allende and Cuban diplomat Luis Fernandez Oña.

Beatriz Allende killed herself in 1977, four years after her father took his own life as troops sent by coup leader Gen. Augusto Pinochet stormed the Chilean presidential palace.

Two other candidates who lost family members to the 1973-1990 Pinochet regime triumphed in the Oct. 28 balloting.

Carolina Toha was elected mayor of the Santiago Centro district. Her father, Jose Toha, was a minister in Salvador Allende's Cabinet who died in the custody of the junta.

The winner in the capital's Huechuraba district was the grandson of Gen. Carlos Prats, a former army commander killed by the Chilean secret police in 1974 while living in exile in Argentina. EFE